Defendant confesses to social worker

A teenager confessed to a social worker that he stabbed Mary Ann Leneghan and shot her friend.

Michael Johnson allegedly poured his heart out during a meeting with Michelle Martin at a Burger King near Clapham Junction Station a few days after the attack on May 7, Reading Crown Court heard.

Miss Martin, giving evidence to the court yesterday, said she was left numb after Johnson told her he carried out the killings for a friend who wanted to get revenge but couldn’t do the deed. He added that both the victims performed oral sex on him.

The jury heard the 19-year-old was one of Miss Martin’s clients at Wandsworth Council and had been due to go with her to a seminar on May 7. He failed to turn up but had repeatedly called her that day asking if she had seen the news, she said.

Miss Martin said she had not seen the news but had done so by the time he called again on May 9 and agreed to meet him at the fast food joint at around 10pm.

She said: “He seemed upset, quite distressed, in a low mood. He said: ‘I tell you what happened, these two girls, yeah, them girls in Reading, they set man bredren [a friend] up to get robbed… so man wants to get revenge. Man called me and we drove up there. We got the girls in the car, saw the girls in the car park and we put them in the boot of the car and we drove to hotel. They were sucking man d***, innit’.”

Miss Martin said: “I thought he was referring to himself. He wouldn’t look at me.”

She then told the court he said to her ‘but man didn’t f*** them, though’.

“‘Man was burning them with hot cigarettes, innit. We put them back in the car and drove to the park. The man’s who beef it was had the knife, but he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t do it, so he gave me the knife, innit, and I was saying ‘nah man, it’s your thing, you do it’, it’s like he couldn’t do it, so I stabbed her’.”

Miss Martin said: “He said he shot the other one.” She said she advised Johnson to give himself up to police.

During cross-examination she agreed Johnson’s language was street talk and “man” could refer to himself or someone else. But she maintained she understood his meaning was that he was responsible for stabbing one of the girls and shooting the other.

Richard Latham QC, prosecuting, earlier alleged Johnson had stabbed 16-year-old Mary Ann to death after the girls were taken to Prospect Park in the boot of a Nissan Almera. Her friend, then 18, survived a gunshot wound to the head.

Mr Latham said the teenagers had earlier been abducted from the car park of the derelict Wallingford Arms pub, bundled into the car boot and taken to a room at the Abbey House Hotel in Connaught Road, West Reading, where they were rapedand tortured.

Mr Latham said it was a revenge attack because one of the defendants, Adrian Thomas, believed the girls set him up to be robbed of drugs at his flat at 263 Oxford Road.

Johnson was arrested after going to Battersea Police Station by appointment on May 17. He made no comment to police.

In other evidence yesterday from police statements, the jury heard Thomas, also known as Redz, was arrested at gunpoint by West Midlands Police in Birmingham on May 11 last year. He said: “This is nuts man, this is nuts,” and gave no comment in interviews to police, the court heard.

Jamaile Morally was arrested after he walked into Tooting Police Station on May 10. The court heard he said: “I ain’t doing time for somebody else. I told Adrian Thomas he should give himself up, he got me into this.”

He added: “When I saw them girls on the telly I couldn’t believe it – when I last saw them, they were walking away.”

He told police he agreed to go to Reading with Thomas “just in case it got out of hand” after Thomas, who he claimed dealt drugs in the town, wanted to find the men who previously beat him up.

They also deny further joint counts of attempted murder, rape and causing grievous bodily harm with intent in relation to the surviving girl.

Jamaile Morally also denies a further charge of rape in relation to the second girl. All defendants further deny two counts of kidnapping Mary Ann and her friend, except Joshua Morally, who has admitted both kidnap charges. The trial continues.